Toothpaste carton moves from paperboard to plastic - New packages: food beverage pharmaceutical Medical HBA - Brief Article

Food & Drug Packaging, Sept, 2003

No other toothpaste package on the shelf looks quite like GlaxoSmithKline's (GSK) Aquafresh Extreme Clean carton. Most other toothpaste cartons are paperboard, while Aquafresh Extreme Clean comes in a rigid plastic carton. GSK wanted high-impact packaging that would help differentiate its new product, grabbing consumer attention at the point of sale.

Says Michele Petruecelli, Aquafresh brand manager, "We wanted [Extreme Clean's] packaging not only to stand out on the retail shelf, but also to express the clean positioning of the brand."

In adapting plastic for the toothpaste cartons, some challenges had to be addressed. For instance, rigid plastic film retains a memory of its original flat state, which means cartons made from it have a tendency to unfold after being converted. And conventional methods of scoring plastic can produce stiff score lines, making plastic cartons difficult to open and square up.

To answer these issues, GSK went to AGI/Klearfold, a MeadWestvaco Packaging resource, which has a proprietary process, called SoftCrease[R], that erases rigid plastic film's penchant for returning to its original shape. The procedure takes place in-line during the converting process and produces scores that fold cleanly and maintain their shape.

The Aquafresh Extreme Clean carton is printed in eight colors. The face of the carton features an opaque white oval that vignettes into a transparent blue field, which shows a glimpse of the metallized toothpaste tube inside the carton.

AGI/Klearfold, a MeadWestvaco Resource 877-918-3023; www.agiklearfold.com